was born at four this morning," it said
abruptly. "It may not live and she can't possibly. The Italian woman
baptised it out of a silver bowl. It is a dreadful thing, for now if
it does live it will be Romish, I suppose, but he said to let her have
her way, so it had to be. He is nearly crazy. He will kill himself, I
think. He knows she must die. It is named after her mother and an
outlandish lot of other names for different people. As soon as she is
dead the Italian woman is going back to Italy. I shall never leave
him."

The leaf was folded here and several lines badly burned. At the bottom
of the leaf I could just make out one more line.

"I cannot be sorry she is dying if I burn in hell for it. Hester
Prynne."

Roger and I stared at each other, the same thought in our minds. I had
imagined many things about the mysterious Hester, but never that she
bore that name, as a matter of simple fact. The connection with
Caliban had been too much for my overtrained imagination, and heaven
knows what baseless theories I had woven around what was at best (or
worst) a mere coincidence. For me the scarlet letter had flamed upon
what I now know to have been a blameless breast, and in my excited
fancy a stormy nature had suffered picturesque remorse where, as a
matter of fact, only a deep and patient devotion had endured its
unrecorded martyrdom of love unguessed and unreturned. So much for
Literature!

Next came two folded half-columns from a newspaper, one containing
only that dreadful list of the dead that our mothers read,
white-cheeked and dry-eyed, in the war time. Opposite the names of
Col. J. Breckenridge Lee and Lieut. J. Breckenridge Lee, Jr., were
hasty, blotted crosses. The other half-column, cut from another and
better printed sheet, recorded with a terrible, terse clearness the
shocking deaths of the aged Col. J.B. Lee and his son Lieut. J.B. Lee,
Jr., of the Confederate Army, at the hand of his son-in-law, Capt.
Lockwood Prynne, who was defending an encampment of the Northern
forces from a skirmishing party led by the rebel officers. Captain
Prynne recognised what he had done as the young lieutenant caught his
father in his arms and turned to stagger back, and rushing forward had
endeavoured to drag them to safety, receiving a shot himself that
shattered his arm, wounding him severely. His recovery was doubtful.

Under our sympathetic eyes the old tragedy lived again, the crisp,
cruel lines seemed printed in